Historical consciousness in Europe

Position Paper | Year 2015

Historical consciousness in Europe

Class of the Humanities

Historical consciousness can change in its intensity: there can be more
or less historical consciousness. But its nature can also change: the
way in which the relationship between present and past is interpreted
can vary. And this relationship with the past has indeed been a varied
one over the last two centuries. The modern historical consciousness,
which began after the fracture that came with the French Revolution and
after the romantic hantises, encapsulated a longing for an inner
connection with the past. Those who had gone before were regarded as
having bestowed a bequest on the modern generations. The new social
shocks at the end of the nineteenth century led to the emergence of a
more radical, anti-modern historical consciousness which bore testimony
to the desire to re-traditionalise society.

By contrast, the context of the social criticism that pervaded the 1960s
and 70s gave rise to a neo-modern historical consciousness. It was
linked to a desire to denounce and often debunk a past that was seen as
wrong, where a continuity between past and present was no longer
regarded as a good thing. In reaction to the (perceived) vacuum this
created, the decades that followed brought something of a historical
reveille, rooted in a late-modern historical consciousness. It lay at
the basis of the creation of a multifaceted world of substitutes, as an
attempt to mask the loss. The gulf between past and present proved too
wide, however. In the post-modern historical consciousness, the past
remained a foreign country. At the same time, the ‘traditional’
historiography had to make way for memory as an instrument for giving
shape to the past. In such a development, the historian can no longer be
the guardian of the status quo. By contrast, he must accept the
changeability of the world, remain aloof and exercise his readers in a
sensitivity to the specificity of different historical periods and
styles. The task of the historian of today is to strengthen historical
literacy.